VIRGINIA WATER, ENGLAND | Billy Horschel has taken a shine to the United Kingdom.
The 37-year-old American very nearly won the Open Championship at Royal Troon in July before finishing runner-up alongside Justin Rose. He made up for the close call on Sunday by winning the BMW PGA Championship for a second time on the West Course at Wentworth.
In 2019, ahead of his debut in the tournament, he said: “This championship and this course has always had a soft spot in my heart. I grew up watching this event on TV. I remember watching Colin [Montgomerie] winning it three years in a row. I have a lot of memories from this golf course, and it’s even better in person than it was on TV.”
Like diplomats visiting foreign countries, golfers are usually smart enough to say the right things before playing in a tournament away from home soil, but Horschel has more than backed up the integrity of those first-time sentiments.
He finished that week in fourth, was the winner on his second visit in 2021, has recorded two top 20s since and, in defeating South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence and, in particular, Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy in extra holes on Sunday, he topped the lot with win No. 2.
At the start of the final round, Italian Matteo Manassero led Horschel and McIlroy by three shots, and they played Sunday together in the last group out. Conventional wisdom insisted the winner would emerge from this trio of former champions. In reality, they were initially becalmed through the front nine, so much so that the flying Lawrence and last year’s runner-up, England’s Aaron Rai, hit the top of the leaderboard.
Rai’s bid ran out of steam deep into the back nine while Lawrence posted a bogey-free 7-under 65 to set a clubhouse target of 20-under 268. He will, however, rue that he was unable to break par on either the par-5 17th and 18th holes.
McIlroy was as enigmatic as ever, reaching 3-under for his round through 16 holes without ever appearing to get out of second gear. At the long 17th, he finally put his foot down and, after unleashing two big blows, drained a 47-foot eagle putt to tie Lawrence on 20-under. But he, too, failed to break par at the 18th, and it allowed Horschel, who matched McIlroy’s final-round 67 by making birdie at both closing holes, to join the playoff.
Lawrence made bogey at the first replay of 18 and departed the scene. McIlroy made two birdies in extra holes, but Horschel bettered him with a birdie and an eagle.
The winner was in no doubt that a remarkable week of putting had been key. He totalled 153 feet of holed putts in the third round, saying afterward the hole “looked like the size of the Atlantic Ocean.”
When he dropped another birdie putt from 39 feet on the first green on Sunday, he grinned sheepishly and later said: “It was kind of ridiculous. All I could do was smile.”
“I didn’t just make a lot of putts; I made a lot of long putts.”
Billy Horschel
The winning blow was also a long putt, this time from 25 feet. “If I didn’t putt well this week, I wasn’t winning,” said Horschel, an eight-time winner on the PGA Tour, including in April in the Dominican Republic. “I did not hit it good enough to win a tournament, but I managed my game well. I didn’t just make a lot of putts; I made a lot of long putts.”
McIlroy endured another strange week, one week after he finished second in the Irish Open and in a year that he also posted near-misses at the U.S. Open and Olympics. His faith in Greek Stoicism is being tested but he insists it is yet to be broken.
“Look, it’s golf and I’m playing well,” he said. “These things happen. It’s just, the game is testing me a little more than it has done in the past, but that’s fine.
“If someone had said you’re going to turn up at Wentworth and shoot 20-under par, I’d take that. All I can do is keep showing up and trying to play the golf that I’ve been playing, and sooner or later it’s going to end up in a win.
“I’m a better golfer than I was five years ago. I know that. It’s just a matter of turning these close calls into wins.”
McIlroy is already building a house near Wentworth and said early in the week he cannot wait to move in. Late on Sunday, Horschel added that: “It wouldn’t shock me if, somewhere down the line, I didn’t buy a house here too.” He really does like the U.K.
For now, he is an excellent guest. After delivering the winning blow, he turned to McIlroy and the pair exchanged smiles. “I was wondering before the putt, ‘What do I do if I make it?’ ” Horschel said. “A fist pump, maybe, or a celebration or something over the top? “But I felt out of respect for Rory, the home favourite, that a smile was right. And when I looked across and saw he was smiling, too, with a nod of approval, that meant the world to me.”
Manassero closed with a 73, 10 more strokes than he needed in a scintillating third round, to share fourth with Rai and first-round pace-setter Matthew Baldwin, also from England.
The 31-year-old Italian’s play on Sunday was a disappointment, but his performance, coming four years to the week after he won on the third-tier Alps Tour, was further evidence he has fully emerged from the golfing doldrums. Ahead of that low-level victory in 2020 he had bottomed out at 1,805th in the world.
Since then, he has won twice on the Challenge Tour, in March for his fifth career title on the DP World Tour and been a consistent contender throughout the summer. He is once again among Europe’s golf elite.
“I don’t think you would find one player on tour that isn’t so happy for him,” McIlroy said. “To be a young phenom, then lose your game and go play the Alps Tour, then bounce back – it takes real character to do that. It’s great to see him back. He’s where he belongs.”
Matt Cooper